Thanks to Calamity I've been able to learn how to work with Arcade OSD and Mame.ini to calibrate h front and back porches at different resolutions, but there are several things I still just can't understand with Arcade OSD. I'll number the questions for clarity and simplicity if I may:

1. What do the Horizontal and Vertical sync pulse values do and should I even touch them? They also seem to move automatically when I change porch values.

2. When carrying the front and back H porch values to the mame.ini, should I also carry the pulse sync (since whether I touch it or not it seems to change)?

3. Is it possible to adjust vertical centering in the mame.ini or are all vertical geometrical changes impossible through software? If centering is possible how does one go around with the values as a percentage of the values from the existing mame.ini values or just putting in the arcade osd values even if mathematically they are not balanced to the default values in mame.ini?

4. Lastly when in arcade osd as I adjust for geometry and get close to the desired geometry I generally start seeing wave patterns of faint lines generally moving left or right, and as I make changes it changes the direction or intensity of these interference like patterns. Sometimes If I ignore geometry and just try to move porches back and front for the sake of reducing the interference I'm able to get to a point where interference seems to disappear altogether. Are these related to the sync pulses and do I need to care about it when calibrating for the mame.ini?

I'm leaving a lot of questions but I really want to learn and understand how this works better but the tutorials I've read mostly explain the basic usage of Arcade OSD and I'm unable to find answers to these.

That's the Generic15 preset from the monitor preset sticky. Horizontal timings are in bold, vertical are underlined.

For horizontal adjustments, after setting any dials/pots or service menu adjustments, the three values of H-front-porch, H-sync-pulse, and H-back-porch are used to adjust the right side, centering, and left-side of the image, respectively (as above). Or anyway that's close enough for now. Play with all three until you get the picture sized/positioned the way you want. Adjusting the modeline in ArcadeOSD sets it for Windows, but GM grabs any mode and recalculates it based on the crt_range lines in mame.ini. So you need to transfer any changes into that file, or to setup your modelines again with VMM and an adjusted monitor preset.

Vertical adjustments cannot generally be made in software, and will require manual or service menu changes. What you can do is get tricky with GM - so use a mode like 256p for a 224p game, and do not stretch it, which will leave more blank lines at the top and bottom than using 240p would. Takes a bit of juggling with configs. And i'm not sure the reverse is possible - as in, only showing 224 lines of a 256p game - so someone else will need to weigh in.

In ArcadeOSd when you hit the limits of horizontal adjustments using the porches, funny things start to happen, and then you lose sync entirely and have to hit esc to go back. Does this CRT have any manual or service menu adjustments you can make? Use those first, of course, then tweak with ArcadeOSD. It sounds a bit weird though, that you're having trouble. The patterns you describe almost sound like interference from something external though, like a second CRT or computer or fridge or IDK.

Thank you for those explanations! I didn't lose sync entirely but I would see ever so faint waves of interference like noise moving. However today I changed my VGA to Component transcoder and things have improved for the better. I still see those faint waves in Arcade OSD but I don't see them in actual games like I did before. My guess is that maybe the psu that came with the transcoder I was using before wasn't quite right.

So when aiming for proper geometry playing with the pulse is perfectly acceptable am I getting this right? So should I also copy all three of those values to the mame.ini or once I get the geometry right in arcade osd do I just copy the porch values? So far I've always been just copying the front and back porch values.

Yes I had asked Calamity if I could do the reverse (running 240p in 224 and I learned that it's apparently not possible). My tv is currently set with perfect geometry for 224, and I get a moderate overscan of around 3.2% with 232p content, and a 6.5%ish overscan with 240p content.

Yes I had asked Calamity if I could do the reverse (running 240p in 224 and I learned that it's apparently not possible). My tv is currently set with perfect geometry for 224, and I get a moderate overscan of around 3.2% with 232p content, and a 6.5%ish overscan with 240p content.

With some trickery you can do this. Force the game resolution, then play about with the vertical size (increasing it until the pixels are clear) and position sliders in game. You probably want filtering disabled too (I forget whether it's definitely unwanted or doesn't matter)

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Please don't PM me with support questions. Ask in public so everyone can learn!

Yes I had asked Calamity if I could do the reverse (running 240p in 224 and I learned that it's apparently not possible). My tv is currently set with perfect geometry for 224, and I get a moderate overscan of around 3.2% with 232p content, and a 6.5%ish overscan with 240p content.

With some trickery you can do this. Force the game resolution, then play about with the vertical size (increasing it until the pixels are clear) and position sliders in game. You probably want filtering disabled too (I forget whether it's definitely unwanted or doesn't matter)

Wow thanks for sharing Cools, this sounds very interesting and I definitely want to try this out. At fear of sounding stupid though I must ask, how do I force the game resolution (do I create a seperate file per game for this?)? And what filtering are we talking about and where do I disable it?

1. What do the Horizontal and Vertical sync pulse values do and should I even touch them? They also seem to move automatically when I change porch values.

These are pretty much standard so there's little point in touching them. They are taken from the ntsc tv standard, so they're guaranteed to work on 100% of standard resolution CRTs.

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2. When carrying the front and back H porch values to the mame.ini, should I also carry the pulse sync (since whether I touch it or not it seems to change)?

You can do it but I wouldn't bother unless you're getting very different results between Arcade OSD and GM, due rounding errors.

You see them changing because all values are interdependant, so when you change any of them the others are recalculated.

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3. Is it possible to adjust vertical centering in the mame.ini or are all vertical geometrical changes impossible through software? If centering is possible how does one go around with the values as a percentage of the values from the existing mame.ini values or just putting in the arcade osd values even if mathematically they are not balanced to the default values in mame.ini?

Yes, vertical centering is possible. And it works in a deterministic way with arcade monitors, but not so well with TVs, because these already have circuits to center the picture that mess with our settings.

What you need to understand about vertical porches is that what you specify in there are the minimums. Based on that, GM/VMMakier will add as much blanking lines on the top and the bottom as required, in order to meet the horizontal frequency set by you in the crt range. E.g., if 12 lines are required, it'll add 6 on top and 6 on bottom. If an uneven number is required, one porch will have one extra line compared to the other.

Now let's say your picture is consistently shifted down. What you need is to add some extra lines to the front porch. Instead of using Arcade OSD, just take your crt range and do the simple maths:

0.191 is the default sync pulse, we know it stands for 3 lines, so one line equals 0.191 / 3 = 0.0637 ms.

If the problem was the opposite, we'd increase the back porch. Notice we want to always increase any of the porches, we never operate by decreasing.

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4. Lastly when in arcade osd as I adjust for geometry and get close to the desired geometry I generally start seeing wave patterns of faint lines generally moving left or right, and as I make changes it changes the direction or intensity of these interference like patterns. Sometimes If I ignore geometry and just try to move porches back and front for the sake of reducing the interference I'm able to get to a point where interference seems to disappear altogether. Are these related to the sync pulses and do I need to care about it when calibrating for the mame.ini?

This is your TVs fault, unfortunately.

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I'm leaving a lot of questions but I really want to learn and understand how this works better but the tutorials I've read mostly explain the basic usage of Arcade OSD and I'm unable to find answers to these.

That's the good attitude. I'd say a basic standard res arcade monitor is better for learning purposes than a TV. Of course arcade monitors have their own problems. But TVs tend to behave randomly to the untrained eye, due to this undersired centering they perform.

1.) Iíve seen conflicting recommendations, what should resolution should we be using when running the test for both geometry and frequency range? I was assuming the 640x480 @ 60i but was hoping for definite answer.

2.). Whatís the neat way to test the vertical refresh rate range for a TV. Porches are mostly for positioning, so do we simply play with the dotclock? and use the value under [V(Hz)] to know when weíve reached the limits? Same question for horizontal? Looks like the program makes sure to keep the combined ms for vertical fixed, unless you edit the dotclock by unlocking the vfreq (which would make sense).

1.) Iíve seen conflicting recommendations, what should resolution should we be using when running the test for both geometry and frequency range? I was assuming the 640x480 @ 60i but was hoping for definite answer.

You must not use the same resolution that's currently active on the desktop, because that one will be read-only and your adjustments won't show up.

For horizontal geometry, the highest the horizontal resolution the more accurate the values you get will be.

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2.). Whatís the neat way to test the vertical refresh rate range for a TV. Porches are mostly for positioning, so do we simply play with the dotclock? and use the value under [V(Hz)] to know when weíve reached the limits? Same question for horizontal? Looks like the program makes sure to keep the combined ms for vertical fixed, unless you edit the dotclock by unlocking the vfreq (which would make sense).

You can unlock the refresh and play with the dotclock as you say, but depending on the mode it's easy to go out of range for hfreq instead of vfreq that's the one you want to test, or the opposite, as both are interdependant. It takes a bit of practice to isolate the one parameter which boundaries you want to check.

Something you can do is to create a list of modes in vmmaker, using a static mode table, such as:

VMMaker will lower its refresh to something like 58 Hz if you're using the arcade_15 preset, as it'll hit the top hfreq of 16.2 kHz. Then, in Arcade OSD play raising the dotclock until you loose sync, that'll give you hfreqmax.

1.) Iíve seen conflicting recommendations, what should resolution should we be using when running the test for both geometry and frequency range? I was assuming the 640x480 @ 60i but was hoping for definite answer.

You must not use the same resolution that's currently active on the desktop, because that one will be read-only and your adjustments won't show up.

For horizontal geometry, the highest the horizontal resolution the more accurate the values you get will be.

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2.). Whatís the neat way to test the vertical refresh rate range for a TV. Porches are mostly for positioning, so do we simply play with the dotclock? and use the value under [V(Hz)] to know when weíve reached the limits? Same question for horizontal? Looks like the program makes sure to keep the combined ms for vertical fixed, unless you edit the dotclock by unlocking the vfreq (which would make sense).

You can unlock the refresh and play with the dotclock as you say, but depending on the mode it's easy to go out of range for hfreq instead of vfreq that's the one you want to test, or the opposite, as both are interdependant. It takes a bit of practice to isolate the one parameter which boundaries you want to check.

Something you can do is to create a list of modes in vmmaker, using a static mode table, such as:

VMMaker will lower its refresh to something like 58 Hz if you're using the arcade_15 preset, as it'll hit the top hfreq of 16.2 kHz. Then, in Arcade OSD play raising the dotclock until you loose sync, that'll give you hfreqmax.

Ok, so using the 320x256 @ 60 Hz and unlocking the Vfreq allowed me to push the upper limits of the Horizontal frequency to 16.89khz before I started to get bowing at the top and eventually a scrambled picture.

On the low end it went down to right at 15khz before I got a distorted shifted picture. (Sounds like a really broad range when reading this)

For the vertical range everything displayed without a distorted picture in all modes of 320x240 @ 55hz through 320 x 240 @ 61hz.

However any frequency I select has a wavy image almost like a ripple in a pond. The further I get from 60 Hz either direction the waviness gets worse:

Note the white line on the right and you can see what Iím talking about.

It appears as though the TV can ďhandleĒ these frequencies but it slightly distorts the image. Is it possible this is a hardware issue like caps need replacing?

That last picture is a weird phenomena, I tested it and I don't get that. The game doesn't change resolution at the cutscene does it?

As for the ripple effect yes that's exactly what I get, on all the tv's I have left to test on, but that video is a pretty dramatic example. I get that anytime I'm under 59.75hz, at CPS games it's present but ever so slight that it would be perfectly playable with it if I could keep my concentration away from it, which once spotted is a bit hard. I found so few games that run properly in arcade preset that I just had to give up, I think I'd have to get an arcade monitor if I want to stick to perfect frequency ranges.

One thing I just don't understand and maybe someone can explain is why 232p and 240p games get messed up graphics when I touch the Mame geometrical controls by the smallest digits (the lines blend in and the image loses lines), but in higher res games like 256 running in 480i I can adjust as much as I like and seemingly no negative impact on the picture. I wouldn't need to do it for any game since I can adjust the tv service menu horizontal and vertical sizing but I'm just curious what is going on with Groovymame in these situations.

If by "Mame geometrical controls" you mean "the screen stretch options in the slider menu", you're digitally scaling with those, of course. So, if you are already upscaling as in 256-into-480 (destroys the point of GM, by the way), the adjustments can't be so noticeable there.

Another question, any idea why I occasionally get an image other all borders around it?

If -triplebuffer is being enabled (e.g. because you're forcing MK at 60Hz), it can cause issues with in-game mode switching (MK changes resolution twice), I guess it could be that. Try disabling -changeres for MK.

If by "Mame geometrical controls" you mean "the screen stretch options in the slider menu", you're digitally scaling with those, of course. So, if you are already upscaling as in 256-into-480 (destroys the point of GM, by the way), the adjustments can't be so noticeable there.

Thanks for that explanation.

I have no choice, on all my crt's (all the ones I kept are Sony consumer tubes) when games run in 256 it looks like I'm watching the reflection of the video in a moving pond, constant geometrical ripples everywhere, the further I get from 59.95hz the stronger it gets and those 256 games tend to be around 56hz which is at a point where it's unplayable. I guess one needs an older less sensitive tv or even better a true arcade monitor for all those higher res games (also to enable 480p on those games). Problem is I have a ton of other devices hooked up and settled on these later Trinitron tubes because I find they deliver the absolute best picture I have seen on a consumer crt in terms of brightness, colors and general sharpness.

I think there's still a lot of things Groovymame is doing over regular Mame even when the resolution is off, I mean video and audio sync improvements, frame delay etc, isn't it? Personally even playing a game like Blood Roar at the wrong resolution (480i 15khz instead of 480p 31khz) I don't notice much difference from the arcade days aside from the interlaced video, game feels really authentic, and I doubt it would feel that real on regular Mame (but maybe I'm wrong).

By the way Arroyo, when you pushed the frequency to 16khz, do you start hearing a louder and strange buzzing? I could be wrong but depending on the resolutions when I was still testing arcade preset I found the tv had odd behaviors like putting out different loud pitches at different resolutions off ntsc standard (funny thing is I heard people over 25 aren't even supposed to hear those anymore and somehow I still do lol).

Yeah itís still groovymame the only thing off will be resolution and in the case of MK the triple buffering youíre enabling. For those 480p games youíd need a tri sync monitor to run them at native res and trisync tend to have thick scanlines when running low res content giving them an unnatural look, so itís a trade off. Sounds to me like if you get the rest perfect on ntsc preset youíve found a sweet compromise. 256 and up arenít that common and if that list is the full list of roms in your folder that run in non native resolution I wouldnít bother.

Iíve done arcade monitors out of cabinets and I wouldnít recommend it. It looks weird and you have to be careful if you ever have kids around since thereís potential danger from the exposed neck. If youíre able to get an actual arcade cabinet though Iíd do it. You might get a softer picture if youíre used to aperture grille though.

By the way Arroyo, when you pushed the frequency to 16khz, do you start hearing a louder and strange buzzing? I could be wrong but depending on the resolutions when I was still testing arcade preset I found the tv had odd behaviors like putting out different loud pitches at different resolutions off ntsc standard (funny thing is I heard people over 25 aren't even supposed to hear those anymore and somehow I still do lol).

Thanks for that. Yes I'm good with my current setup since the bulk of games I play are in 224p or 232p and run in the 58.x~59.x range.

I considered the loose arcade cabinet too as a friend does that. At the time I considered doing a DIY case for it which would have required spacing for air flow, but I'm not very good at DIY projects like that, and I pictured it looking absolutely amateurish and just put that on the list of things to consider in the future lol.

So just to be clear, when a game is running in non native resolution in groovymame, I still get the other great benefits that groovymame provides including frame delay is this correct?

Also out of curiosity, can one force a game in higher res such as 256p or above to run in 240p? Or is it preferable to have these games run in 480i generally?

By the way Arroyo, when you pushed the frequency to 16khz, do you start hearing a louder and strange buzzing? I could be wrong but depending on the resolutions when I was still testing arcade preset I found the tv had odd behaviors like putting out different loud pitches at different resolutions off ntsc standard (funny thing is I heard people over 25 aren't even supposed to hear those anymore and somehow I still do lol).

Hadnít noticed anything like that, but probably just going deaf.

Probably one instance where this is a good thing. I should have lost the ability to hear these frequencies over a decade ago, but unfortunately I still hear crt buzz. ^^;

I guess one needs an older less sensitive tv or even better a true arcade monitor for all those higher res games (also to enable 480p on those games). Problem is I have a ton of other devices hooked up and settled on these later Trinitron tubes because I find they deliver the absolute best picture I have seen on a consumer crt in terms of brightness, colors and general sharpness.

You sound just like I did 6 years ago. In my case it was the Loewe E3000 chassis that I couldn't let go of (so amazing yet so frustratingly inflexible).

Do you really want to compromise on emulation accuracy for the sake that bright, sharp Trinitron picture you're accustomed to? Plenty of CRTs on their way to landfill... there are other excellent options out there.

Personally even playing a game like Blood Roar at the wrong resolution (480i 15khz instead of 480p 31khz) I don't notice much difference from the arcade days aside from the interlaced video, game feels really authentic, and I doubt it would feel that real on regular Mame (but maybe I'm wrong).

Bloody Roar ran on ZN system board, so no 480-P (31 kHz), I'm afraid. What you're displaying under GM at the native video mode is what you indeed experienced then.

Recap> Yes there are a ton of great games there in those lists. I think the reason my list of games running in non native resolution was so small was also because I purposely took out all the vertical games. To be quite honest the bulk of what I play is mostly CPS1+2, Sega and Konami titles.

I had no idea about Bloody Roar, makes sense that I couldn't tell the difference then.

Paranoid> Yes the problem is I use this tv for something like 8 other consoles, so the picture quality has to be globally good for the other systems too. However I wouldn't mind picking up another crt for groovymame, specifically for Mortal Kombat since I actually don't play a ton of irem games other than the beat em ups which run properly here. It's something I'll have to try to do some point in the future, I went through my phase of picking up crt after crt, opening them up, calibrating etc, it can really drain you after a while so I'm not looking forward to that.

EDIT: I'm going to read through that old thread, I had a big smile reading the first few posts, I see what you mean.

To be quite honest the bulk of what I play is mostly CPS1+2, Sega and Konami titles.

Then you might as well just stay with what you have, youíre not going to see any improvement on those (aside from maybe a couple 80ís Sega titles).

Thereís this one other Panasonic model but Iím drawing a blank on the model number, from around 2003 or so, one of their aperture grille models made for Europe but somehow was available in the States too, reds lean very slightly towards pink compared to the fv300 but otherwise very solid picture, should be able to do 50/60hz although not sure if it handles stuff inbetween so canít guarantee MK. Just look for silver case Panasonics from around that year.

Thank you. I love Panasonic tv's too. I've had great experiences with them.

I've decided to give arcade osd one last shot because I remember Calamity telling me that I didn't need to switch to ntsc to do what I wanted to do (get the modes to all run at 59.95hz). I remember that I can't change the preset at the edit page or it breaks it as Calamity explained. So I'm wondering where do I make those changes, is it in the super resolutions ini file? If I go this route and leave the other frequency range open to 15hz~16hz and up will I be able to run 256p in 59.95hz? If not are there any other advantages to switching to arcade preset? I'm not sure there won't be any video issues with it running above 16hz but it might be worth a try (or maybe Arroyo has tried this already?). Otherwise I'm really delighted with the setup as is, just trying to get as much as possible out of it.

Another question, any idea why I occasionally get an image other all borders around it?

If -triplebuffer is being enabled (e.g. because you're forcing MK at 60Hz), it can cause issues with in-game mode switching (MK changes resolution twice), I guess it could be that. Try disabling -changeres for MK.

Thank you. I love Panasonic tv's too. I've had great experiences with them.

I've decided to give arcade osd one last shot because I remember Calamity telling me that I didn't need to switch to ntsc to do what I wanted to do (get the modes to all run at 59.95hz). I remember that I can't change the preset at the edit page or it breaks it as Calamity explained. So I'm wondering where do I make those changes, is it in the super resolutions ini file? If I go this route and leave the other frequency range open to 15hz~16hz and up will I be able to run 256p in 59.95hz? If not are there any other advantages to switching to arcade preset? I'm not sure there won't be any video issues with it running above 16hz but it might be worth a try (or maybe Arroyo has tried this already?). Otherwise I'm really delighted with the setup as is, just trying to get as much as possible out of it.

What I did was just leave Arcade 15khz preset as is (actually I edited the monitor preset to make the front porch be 3.000, as it fits my screen better, although itís not necessary cause you can do it in the mame.ini). I then created a separate mk2.ini to test things. All I really did was change the vertical frequency from the default 49.00 to 59.5. I also changed the vertical resolution minimum and maximum to 240 and 480 respectively.

You should be able to setup the two monitor ranges like you and Calamity discussed earlier to set anything under 59.XXX Hz to default to 480 (just like youíve been doing). That way instead of having to create a crazy amount of .ini files for each game or system you can have GroovyMame just switch on the fly knowing that these TVís canít really handle under that frequency range.

Thanks, so in other words I can just backup my mame.ini, move to arcade_15khz preset and restore my ini back in place and the 224, 232 and 240 games will be unchanged running with the same as ntsc settings with proper geometry? From there do I enter a fourth crt range for 256p?

All this without touching the super resolutions ini to change it to 59.95hz?

Did you try forcing mk2.ini to 256p /59hz instead of 240/480? In other words I'm trying to understand whether or not 256p and up with 59.95hz is workable or not, if it isn't then ntsc preset pretty much has me covered I think, since I get most 224, 232 and 240 pretty much spot on perfect as it (with the exception of the few games from the list I compiled somewhere that run under 58hz which locks on triple buffering I guess, then the only games I just can't get right are MK and a bunch of shoot em ups mainly Irem and Data East games.

On your FV310/300 are you faring well with other games with non standard frequencies? Sounds like you're doing it on a per game basis?

Thanks, so in other words I can just backup my mame.ini, move to arcade_15khz preset and restore my ini back in place and the 224, 232 and 240 games will be unchanged running with the same as ntsc settings with proper geometry? From there do I enter a fourth crt range for 256p?

All this without touching the super resolutions ini to change it to 59.95hz?

Did you try forcing mk2.ini to 256p /59hz instead of 240/480? In other words I'm trying to understand whether or not 256p and up with 59.95hz is workable or not, if it isn't then ntsc preset pretty much has me covered I think, since I get most 224, 232 and 240 pretty much spot on perfect as it (with the exception of the few games from the list I compiled somewhere that run under 58hz which locks on triple buffering I guess, then the only games I just can't get right are MK and a bunch of shoot em ups mainly Irem and Data East games.

On your FV310/300 are you faring well with other games with non standard frequencies? Sounds like you're doing it on a per game basis?

Hey bud, sorry for the late reply, probably feels like I abandoned the thread. Been crazy with work and family last few days.

So I got a chance to play around and I think Iíve got the settings you are looking for in the Arcade 15 preset. Itís a single line to describe the phenomena of the TVís this far. Since anything under 59.xxhz is an issue and because (as far as I understood it from Calamity) resolutions exceeding 240p (i.e. Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Smash TV, etc.) require a lower refresh rate it seems the simplest line to describe the performance of these sets so far is this:

Where xx is the lowest refresh your monitor can handle without introducing the water ripple effect. For me I didnít really notice it below there, for you it sounds like 59.95hz.

This forces games below that frequency range to run at 480i, with the exception of games that are within the limits of the sync_refresh_tolerance. So for example if you left it at the default value of 2.0 for sync_refresh_tolerance Sailor Moon which is a 240p game but with a refresh rate of 57.55 will still maintain its native resolution of 240p but will run at in my case at 59.5hz cause thatís the low end I specified within the mame.ini.

Give it a shot and see what you think. It also works with vertical games like Galaga, and looks pretty good despite the interlaced frames.

Iíll be performing an RGB mod at some point in the near future to test if thereís any effect (I donít think it will), and will also be posting in the monitor forum as this issue looks like something that could be related to Capacitors needing replacement. The fact that it happens across so many sets seems unlike to be a capacitor issue, but maybe just maybe it was a systemic problem.

Thank you so much Arroyo! I'm going to be doing a lot of testing this week end with what you gave me there. Sounds like I can basically go arcade_15khz preset and copy the settings of my current crt ranges, which have correct geometry for 224, 232, 240 (they needed individual tweaking to correct the larger resolution to the proper aspect ratio) and just leave the default 15625-16200 column as such.

It's definitely not a capacitor problem because I tested on 4 tv's. One FV300 of which was actually new out of box, I bought for safekeeping some years ago.

Apparently this was first spotted by Neo Geo fans some years ago but I guess not enough people do Groovymame or run actual arcade boards for this issue to have been properly covered earlier. As much as I'd like to get everything running fine I'm just too happy with the picture quality I get out of Sony aperture grille tubes to change to a dedicated Groovymame tube at the moment, but it's definitely something to keep in mind potentially for the future. Meanwhile this should get better documentation to warn other potential users who might want to run certain games on certain Trinitron sets, and to be honest I expect this probably extends to most digital chassis tv's made for North America. I no longer have any non Sony at the moment so I can't test but I found there were a lot of similarities with the late aperture grille tv's by Toshiba and Panasonic tubes from when I had them, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same issues arise there.

I no longer have any non Sony at the moment so I can't test but I found there were a lot of similarities with the late aperture grille tv's by Toshiba and Panasonic tubes from when I had them, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same issues arise there.

Trust me: it's nothing to do with tube type and all to do with chassis design.

I have seen many permutations of this issue ranging from zero (TV acts just like an arcade monitor) to your situation (TV shits itself anywhere south of 60 Hz).

That said, you've got me really curious to dig out some of my hoarded Sonys and experiment. So surprised the stable sync range is so narrow.

I no longer have any non Sony at the moment so I can't test but I found there were a lot of similarities with the late aperture grille tv's by Toshiba and Panasonic tubes from when I had them, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same issues arise there.

Trust me: it's nothing to do with tube type and all to do with chassis design.

I have seen many permutations of this issue ranging from zero (TV acts just like an arcade monitor) to your situation (TV shits itself anywhere south of 60 Hz).

That said, you've got me really curious to dig out some of my hoarded Sonys and experiment. So surprised the stable sync range is so narrow.

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

I was referring to the chassis actually and not the tube type, my bad for not being clear. I had noticed a lot of similarities in the picture of the Toshiba and Panasonic with the late Sony tv's in terms of what kind of noise or interference they receive, digital chassis are more prone to interference including internal. Things like "tilt" setting would change interference direction etc and I noticed they would generally require the same or very similar settings for best results at reducing noise. I think towards the end at least for North American models they were pretty much using Sony as their model (eventhough I do have a lot of respect for these brands too especially Panasonic).I'm not positive that the chassis is the sole determining factor but I wouldn't be surprised if it's at least partly to blame for the high sensitivity to off standard frequencies.

If you think of it... what could be causing that underwater ripple on a CRT? It must be something strong and magnetic... a degauss coil? It'd seem like something pulsing at 60 Hz in there, so once you refresh off that frequency it starts causing interference. Your AC current is 60 Hz where you live, isn't it. In my view it is simply a bad design of the chassis. That chassis model is flawed. The designers only tested NTSC and the issue is hidden at that frequency.

I think towards the end at least for North American models they were pretty much using Sony as their model (eventhough I do have a lot of respect for these brands too especially Panasonic).

Your not totally wrong here, the Aperture grill was created by Sony, marketed under the name Trinitron, and was dominant for a few decades until the patent wore out allowing other manufacturers to use the design. Having said that I donít believe the fact that itís an Aperture grill design necessitates the chassis to be the same in terms of frequency display range. It could be that some other manufactures made Aperture grill TVís with a chassis that could go below this 59.xxHz range. That way you get the best of both worlds.

Check out this video on the Trintron (Aperture grill) history, itís quite informative on the topic:

Although these issues seem to affect the Sonyís with multiple digital chassis across the board (chassis 6, 5D, etc.) , I still have hope that there was a flaw in the hardware used (again maybe capacitors, maybe not) that would allow us to replace some parts and have it work. Itís unlikely, but worth trying before abandoning these for their potential. For now hunting down a Trinitron prior to them using a digital chassis seems like the most potential, or another brand with the Aperture grill. As explained in the video above there are inherent advantages to the design which is what makes it attractive.

Yes I think Calamity probably has a point there about some design flaw caused by interference. It's awfully weird that Sony let this slip up in so many models.

Arroyo I can also save you some time, you probably have to go towards the 1999 tv's and earlier, the FV model before the 300 (can't remember the name but a two digit number) also does this as do the FS line (FS100 and FS120) tv's as well (so BA-5, BA-5D, BA-6 chassis etc are affected). It's possible Sony knew over time and didn't care since they assumed North American users were only running 60hz (and probably everyone but us were lol), as a result hard to know if this doesn't go even further back. Everything else in these tv's was pretty modern for their time. I mean the inside board layout is well designed all though I do find the shielding used seems reduced compared to early 90's tv's, but I assumed maybe the need was lessened over time. This seems to be the case on all digital chassis I've owned, I distinctly remember the 200X era Toshiba tubes also being this way. It's also why one sometimes has to work on minimizing as close to zero as possible internal interference through calibration and sometimes menu tinkering, for example on the FV300 I find I reduce inner interference to near zero by having tilt set to max to the right (or was it the left?), and then I tilt the yoke in the desired location to have a centered picture. I know these kind of tweaks sound outright bizarre but it's something that is arguably necessary if the interference is noticeable to you (most people probably didn't notice or didn't care). Older tv's didn't have a "tilt" function at all so it's nice to have but kind of redundant if using it introduces noise of some sort on some sources lol.

Thanks for the link by the way, saving it for later today. That fellow has a great channel.